Parliamentary Constituencies Bill (Seventh sitting)

Debate between Christian Matheson and Shaun Bailey

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 7th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 30th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)]

rose—

[Shaun Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Con)]

rose—

Parliamentary Constituencies Bill (Fifth sitting)

Debate between Christian Matheson and Shaun Bailey

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 5th sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 25th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Shaun Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Con)]

It is great to see you back in the Chair, Mr Paisley. As a relatively new Member of the House, I am quite nervous about following some of the right hon. Members who have spoken. I do not know whether I will quite be able to hit the bar, but I will give it a go.

Given that six months ago I probably did not anticipate being here, potentially putting myself out of a job is an interesting proposition. I wish to touch on some of the points made by my right hon Friends the Members for Elmet and Rothwell and for Basingstoke. I must apologise to the latter—I have been referring to her as my hon. Friend, and have not paid tribute to her membership of the Privy Council. They made some interesting points on self-interest. As my right hon Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell said in the first evidence session, we all have a self-interest because we all want to represent the communities that have put us here.

That notion of community is interesting. My neighbour, the right hon. Member for Warley, made the point in the first evidence session that Government Members might not understand communities quite as much because of our sprawling rural seats. If he can find some sprawling rural parts of Sandwell that he wants to take me to, I would be more than happy to meet him there.

[Christian Matheson]

What about the country park?

[Shaun Bailey]

That is not in my patch.

--- Later in debate ---

[Shaun Bailey]

I say to the hon. Gentleman that I am in the process of considering how my support will go; I will not pin my colours to the mast right now.

[Christian Matheson]

Pin them! [Laughter.]

[Shaun Bailey]

First, I will listen to the arguments that the hon. Member for Glasgow East makes, because I do not want to deprive him of the opportunity to articulate his points in the way that only he can. So, we will see what happens when we come to that amendment.

I will simply say that we come to this issue with a degree of self-interest—we all do. Historically, this place has not been the best at balancing the boundaries and making sure that there is equal and fair representation. The parameters that we are setting are flexible enough to ensure that the boundary commission can show some imagination, and we cannot do down the inputs from communities if we are to be sure that these new constituencies are accurately representative of the areas that people live in. Also, we must give credit to the independence of this process. We have yet to hear a really strong argument as to how the independence of these judicially-led bodies can be compromised.

I will round off my comments there.